What follows is a brief description of the hardware and software we use in
image acquisition and editing. We got most of the equipment for use in our
own digital photography. The exceptions to this are the flatbed scanner
and the copy stand, which we obtained primarily for use with vintage photos.

A supervisor - everyone needs someone to ensure they produce the
highest quality work. Below is our overall supervisor here at
Stunning Cat Productions. She demands the finest of everything.

A large monitor - we're using a 19" NEC monitor for
editing. I try to keep the lighting in the room dim, with no
lights on behind me so that there will be no glare on the glass.

A big hard disk - photos take a lot of space. The largest files
I have are scanned 35mm slides (which are not too germane to this
discussion) which as uncompressed files can be up to 30-50MB! The
uncompressed files I take with my digital camera are close to 5MB.
If you have a few working copies of the files, the space on your hard
disk will fill quickly.

A CD-writer - we use an HP 9200, for archiving photos on a durable
medium, and for distributing photos. As of now, I archive photos
to CD shortly after getting files onto my hard disk. Previously, I
only archived the files once I've edited them, or files for which I did
not have an original photo elsewhere. Having recently lost a hard
disk (actually 2 in 2 months, but the other had nothing to do with
photography), I now put a copy of my files on CD as soon as it goes on
computer. Did I mention you should backup your files?
Ideally, you should have at least 2 copies of important files archived
in 2 separate places. CDs are inexpensive, and provide 650MB of
storage each, so it never hurts to make a couple of copies.

A word or two about file storage here: Why a CD, and not a zip disk,
floppy disk, backup tape, etc? I chose to go this way for several
reasons. I use CD-R (i.e. the record once type), so I don't have to worry
about accidental erasure or overwriting. They have lots of space, 650 MB,
and can be bought in bulk for less than a $1 apiece, encouraging storage.
You can also distribute files easily with them - most systems today have a CD or
DVD reader (note that if you use the read/write version, CD-R/W, regular CD-roms
may not read them), so we can send files to others (this becomes a big deal when
you are trading access to photos for a CD and prints of the electronic
copy). Since DVD roms will read CDs, my totally uninformed guess is that
this medium will be able to be read by standard home computer systems longer
than some of the other currently available media. This being said, in the
future if you are going to get a system without a CD-reader, remember you will
need to copy your files to something you can access (though there are still
places where I could get my old 8" floppies read from the pre-IBM PC era,
I'd hate to have to pay someone to read my files for me).

I chose a CD-writer also because of my file storage format. There are
many common file formats for storing graphic images: TIF, JPG, GIF, PCX, TGA,
BMP to name a few. Mr. Sid and JPG2000 are newer formats that use wavelet
compression algorithms (don't ask - I have no idea) to compress file size with
less loss of image quality than some of the other (notably JPG) compression
algorithms. I use TIF (of TIFF) files for storing images and for saving
images I'm still working on if I stop mid-editing. TIF files are lossless,
i.e. you get an exact record of the image and do not lose any quality when
you save the image. It has some other advanatages, such as being common,
so most image software will recognize it, and it will allow embedding of ICC
profiles (when and if I'm really brave, I'll discuss color management and ICC
profiles - until then, look on some of the photo sites in the links). The
disadvantage of TIF files is that they are big. So, you need lots of
storage space for them, and thus the CD-writer (see, this actually had something
to do with the CD-writer).

A photo quality printer - We're using an Epson 1270 photo printer.
The prints coming out of this printer are absolutely fantastic. We
had an HP Photosmart printer (the original) previously, but the new
printer produces a much better image. Epson (of course) recommends
using their own papers for the printer, and the older photos look very
nice on the heavyweight matte paper, but we've found that the Pictorico
Premium Watercolor Cardstock paper is absolutely terrific for
reproducing old photos. This paper adds just a bit of texture that
gives the photos a classic touch.

Epson is claiming a life expectancy of prints on the 1270 similar to that of
modern color photographic prints, if the print is stored in the right conditions
(for those who don't know, there has been an issue with color changing for some
with the 870/1270 models especially, but not necessarily only, if left to open
air and sunlight - see rec.photo.digital for more than you ever wanted to
know). Some inkjet printers will only give prints that last for a year or
two without color change even under the best of conditions, so whatever printer
you use, you will want to check the specs on longevity of the prints. For
those who are nuts about archival prints and wish to spend more money, the Epson
2000 photo printer is designed to produce prints with a >100 year life
expectancy under the right conditions and with the right papers. This
printer uses pigment-based inks, which reportedly will last much longer (though
you will need to look at some of the reviews - apparently some of the pigments
show up as different colors in different lighting).

A graphics tablet - we use a Wacom graphire USB tablet. We
picked it up for $79 on the web. A pen-based graphics tablet is
much easier to use than a mouse to trace a line on a photo.

The following represent our means of obtaining an image of a vintage
photos. Case 3 has details on using them to get an image for editing:

A flatbed scanner - We use an HP Scanjet 6200C, which will provide an
optical scanning resolution of about 1200 dpi. I've read that most
prints will not provide more than 300 dpi of information, so we usually
scan photos at this setting, occasionally at 600 dpi for small photos.
While flatbeds take much more space than the "feed through"
scanners (I'm sure they have an official name), you don't run the risk
of damaging a photo by running it through the motorized rollers (and the
feed-through type would not be able to handle glass or metal).

A digital camera - This is handy for things which can't be reproduced
on the scanner. We have a nikon coolpix 950 - a 2 mega-pixel
camera with very nice macro capabilities. I'm told this is also
helpful on the road, e.g. when going to an archive and you don't want to
take a laptop computer and a flatbed scanner with you.

A copy stand - shown below. We couldn't use a scanner to
reproduce photos in albums without physically damaging the albums, so we
got a copy stand to provide a stable camera mount and even lighting.
Not shown is the Nikon 950, which was used to take the photo. This
stand has 4 - 150W bulbs for lighting (also not shown is the pair of
sunglasses I wear while using the stand!).

The album shown on the stand contains the image used in the following
tutorial. The mount on the vertical bar is set for the camera to
shoot the album pages. I use the maximum zoom on the camera (35mm
equivalent of a 110mm lens) to minimize distortion from a "wide
angle" effect. I shoot uncompressed TIFF files for
restoration work - which produces a 5.6 MB file for each image (5 images
per 32M compact flash card). The Nikon 950 does not have a cable
release mechanism (though you can get 3rd party devices which will let
you do it), we get around this by using the self-timer to shoot the
photos.

Software:

Photo editing: There are many excellent photo editing packages
out on the market. We use Picture Window Pro v3.0 by Digital
Light and Color. I've found it to be a very powerful editing
program, as you will hopefully see as you progress through the tutorial.
I purchased a prior version when I was still new to digital imaging (I
had Microsoft Picture It at the time, since it came with my original
photo printer - ok if you want to add a cute border to your photo,
but...). Picture Window had enough automated and easy to use tasks
that I could make a scanned modern color photo look nice enough to print
out an 8x10 without a huge learning curve for the program. As we
have gotten into digital photo restoration, I've taken time to learn the
program in depth (they have some excellent white papers on different
topics that come on the program CD). The advanced features of the
program have been incredibly helpful in restoration. At the
original time of writing up this section we used PW Pro v2.5. The main
difference between 2.5 and 3.0 is that the newer version can handle ICC color
management profiles for monitors, scanners, and printers, and can allow you to
work in different color spaces. I got Praxisoft's
WiziWYG color profiling software with this, to create profiles for my
hardware for color management. I'm still playing with this, so you'll hear
more once I've got it tuned.

The de facto standard for photographic imaging is Adobe
Photoshop. This is a powerful editing program, and allows plug-ins
from third party manufacturers. This is the main thing that I miss in
using Picture Window is the plug-in support. Photoshop also allows (and
indeed encourages) using adjustment layers, so that different transformations
can be done in different layers and subsequently undone. While PW pro does
not support layers, so far I've not run across anything where this is necessary,
though at times it would be helpful. I have not used the full version of
Photoshop 6.0, though I have used the LE version. I keep it on my computer
(came free with my printer) so that I can use plug-ins that I really like.
So far, though, I've still only used Picture Window for any serious
editing. While photoshop is powerful and is the industry standard, I find
it somewhat user-hostile, and the full version is quite a bit more expensive the
PW Pro.

A popular program on the rec.photo.digital newsgroup is Jasc's
Paint Shop Pro. It apparently supports photoshop plug-ins, and is
reasonably powerful. I have not used it, but as I mentioned, it has
received good press in the newsgroup.

Both Picture Window and Paint Shop Pro have free downloadable demos at their
website, so if you are in the market for a program, you may wish to visit their
sites. PW Pro is a full downloadable version which works for 30 days, one
day when I get to Jasc's site I'll let you know the details.

This site is written using PW Pro as my editing program, so the commands are
geared towards this program. Any of the 3 programs above (and indeed many
others) will be able to accomplish what is done in these case studies - it is
just a matter of finding the corresponding commands. You can still
accomplish much of what we will do in the case studies with some of the simple
programs, such as Microsoft's Picture It or Adobe Photo Deluxe, to name two, but
for the dollars I would get one of the more powerful programs to gain the huge
increase in flexibility of editing.

Photo Printing: Any of the photo editors
will, of course, print your photos for you. However, I have a
separate printing program which easily allows me to print multiple
photos on a page. You can do this with any of the 3 editing
programs above, you just have to work at it. Q-image
lets you use a drag and drop interface to put multiple images on a page,
and does an excellent (and I mean excellent) job with pixel
interpolation to enlarge your prints while avoiding a pixilated look to
the enlarged image. It also has capabilities for handling ICC
color management profiles. A free demo is downloadable, which is
time limited (14 days if I recall), and does not allow much queuing of
photos for batch printing. This program is definitely worth
checking out if you print many photos.

If you are interested in enlargements, you may wish to
check out the Photoshop plug-in Genuine
Fractals. If you have photoshop (of Photoshop LE), this
program will reportedly allow you to make very large enlargements while
maintaining a viewable image. I've played with the program some,
and while it is excellent at what it does (it is the state of the art),
I tend not to print over 8x10", and Q-image has done quite well in
this range (not to say that it won't go larger, it's just that I tend
not to go larger).